More Americans getting HIV testing, CDC reports

LOS ANGELES — At least 45 percent of American adults have been tested for HIV at least once, an increase of five percentage points and 11.4 million people since 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday.

But that still leaves 55 percent of adults, and 28.3 percent of adults with risk factors for contracting HIV, who have never been tested, the agency said in a Vital Signs report.

About 48 percent of women have been tested, but only 41 percent of men.

The CDC estimates that about 1.1 million Americans are HIV-positive and that about 200,000 of them do not know it because they have never been tested. More than 30 percent of those who do become diagnosed as HIV-positive do so only after they have been positive for several years, which makes controlling the infection much more difficult.

In 2006, the CDC recommended that HIV testing become a routine part of medical care for adults and adolescents and that people at high risk of infection, particularly gay males, but also those who abuse intravenous drugs, be tested once a year.